Chapter Sixteen: A Lecture in Literature

Mr. Colbie Reynold, an English teacher in the State of New York, was giving a lecture on the philosophy of language, including the concepts of different interpretations employed in the scrutiny of the many works of fiction, novels, epics, poems, and other written forms of art.

No, Mr. Reynold was not in the future nor the past. He is in the current time, in the year of our Lord, and in the present-day version of the United States of America. The problem in this particular scene is not the time line (or other time travellers), but an academic endeavor that his students will face during the administration of the examinations for the SATs later that year.

"Literature is a form of human expression that allows the writer to communicate what he thought about the world, by sharing his own perception of reality, while taking or giving criticisms to social problems to make it more obvious, so that the reader will become more aware of the conditions that surround his existence."

The class was busy scribbling notes while the lecture continues.

"Often times, the writer notes or emphasizes the sufferings experienced in the human condition by making it prominent to evoke emotions of sympathy from the reader. A skillful author can weave his ideas in a literary work that aims to entertain, although making it principally entertaining may lose its proposed moral content since the reader will lose the point when his attention was focused too much 'on the commercial appeal' rather than the actual symbolic message of the prose."

"Literature, in this sense, becomes a medium of diverse expressions that appeal to several, differently-abled faculties and the interpretation of the mind in its capacity to understand, and to decode several artistic techniques, including what was pretty obvious."

"So, what is the role of the writer at this juncture? Is it to write his own set of devoted words to explain his thoughts into a philosophical underpinnings of the required rhetoric? Of styles and the beauty of the printed poem? Will an illustration help in digesting its contents?"

The class went silent and still. Mr. Reynold continues.

"In writing about the human condition, an author must comply with pre-existing norms by sticking to the demands of current practice, while allowing him to slowly carve his own path and, maybe, one day, create his own literary movement. Some consider this as a rebellion from the current social thinking that ultimately will benefit from a solemn revolution, of the writer, and his personal crusade that the reader may also find meritorious."

"There are many artistic movements that surfaced throughout history. And while some of them are still used in contemporary expression, most of these hard-and-fast rules have simply vanished, if not improved by natural selection."

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